Tag: china

“…Jiaohua Ji or Beggar’s Chicken is up next. The Jiangsu Province specialty is made by covering an entire chicken with clay and baking it for nearly six hours. The legend of its origin says the mud or clay, when cooked and cracked open, removes the bird’s feathers, completely revealing juicy meat.

Not everything is appealing. We shy away from the pig snouts, feet, knees, and ears, and I stare at a gelatinous mound of cubes shaking on a cook’s grill. Chao Menzi, a starch-based Dalian delicacy, is getting fried. Another alarming sight I’ve heard of before catches my attention. Piled high in a kettle are boiling Shi Dan; these eggs have fetuses in them that you have to crunch through. We keep walking…”

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Is Gray Income really just a “Fact of daily life in China”? Credit: 1421consulting.com

You’re late to the game, the lines for tickets are ridiculous. You’re losing hope of getting in and watching your favorite team. Until some dude in a ball cap and jeans saunters over to you and discreetly taps a bag he’s carrying and mumbles, “Tickets, man, need tickets?”

Buying from scalpers is a gamble, no doubt, but I’ll be honest, I did it with a few friends when we almost missed a game in South Korea two years ago. The seats were crappy, but we moved around and made do. Before that shady guy showed up we thought we’d lost out on chance to see the Twins playing, but it all worked out.

China has its own kind of scalpers, and just like everything else in this country full of contradictions, they take it to the extreme. Huang Niu, Yellow Cows, is the Mandarin term used to describe these folks who hang around bus and train stations. We’ve used them here from time to time, but never as a first resort.

Where China takes this idea and goes to the nth degree is at the banks, hospitals, and other civil service industries.

About a year ago a video on WieBo (Chinese Twitter) surfaced and brought this issue into the public forum. A young woman and her mother surrounded by patients stand in line at a hospital, and the young woman is yelling at this older lady. The older woman is one of the people who wake up early, get to the hospital and get the first tickets to see the specialist doctors. She’s not sick at all, and instead sells the ticket to the highest bidder. In the video the young woman, who is seeking treatment for her sick mother, yells at the scalper for scamming people like this. The scalper calmly replies that she does all the work. She gets up and comes early. The payment is for her work and time. Very practical, right?

Where this practicality crosses the line into illegal activity is when the hospital staff and the scalper collude on the practice. This is the part that is very hard to pin down because no one admits a thing. The specialists are the ones most want to see, but there are so many people who want to get into see them that it is pretty hard. Unless you get there early enough and are lucky enough. The other way is to know someone who can pull some strings.

That’s when these scalpers use their guanxi or connections with the workers to snare this sought-after ticket, all the while keeping it from other patients who should receive it. Totally wrong and totally illegal. But hard as hell to prove on a case by case basis.

It’s all about those Red Maos. Credit: China Medical News.com

The banks are another story altogether. More complex, these particular scalpers are called Zhong Jie, intermediaries, and perform more than just getting people quick tickets. The formal sounding name is fitting as you realize how institutionalized the whole system truly is. Read: Corrupt.

These Zhong Jie are customarily middle-aged women, but there are men among their ranks. Here’s how they work and how to engage their services. And why they seem like a necessary evil in the present day China.

Credit: adst.org

In China, any official civil service that a citizen may need to use is rendered into a labyrinthine obstacle course that often leaves a person sweating, tired, and at their wit’s end due to the farce that is bureaucracy here. License, renting an apartment, paying utilities, buying property, banking—doing any of that here can make even the most self-actualized individual want to run into traffic.

Generally speaking, at any official building you can run into Zhong Jies. Stand in line for a minute or so and they will approach you on their own. Look around and you’ll find them standing by doorways or in the corners of the room chatting up the security guards. They are discreet but direct. They tell you what they can do and their price. You take them up on their offer or brave the “system” on your own.

The world of bank loans is how I entered unknowingly into this cycle of institutionalized corruption. A while back, my wife took out a loan to help her folks with a new apartment. We went to the bank and outside the doors a plump fifty-something-year-old Chinese woman with two purses met us. Xiao Ming talked to her respectfully, addressing her by her sir name with the title “Jie”—sister—after. Apparently Xiao Ming had met this woman at the housing bureau office. I had no idea who this lady was, but everyone else in the bank did.

As I quickly found out, she was a Zhong Jie, our intermediary for getting the loan at the bank. In the span of an hour and a half, she cut through a dozen lines, joked with workers while handing them our documents and a bit of money discreetly tucked between forms, and all the while assured us that everything was okay. I didn’t understand much of that morning, but it was clear that our Zhong Jie had saved us hours and hours of standing in lines and the guesswork of unclear instructions that the bank seemed to give just to screw with people. I saw several people waiting in lines, only to get to the counter and be told they’d filled out the wrong paper and needed to do it all over again, and, yes, wait in line. She helped us avoid all the pitfalls. It was like watching a slight of hand act where there were so many hands to keep your eyes on that eventually I just gave up and, when our Zhong Jie declared that a loan agent would call us in a few days, I just chalked it up to magic.

Come to find out later that Zhong Jies spend all their time at banks building up guanxi with bank employees. This is pretty much their “day job.” They do favors, give money, share food, anything to ensure a working business relationship. They are not employees at any of the places for which they provide services. The Zhong Jie then directs her customers to her “friend” and takes her cut (we paid 1,000RMB for our Zhong Jie’s service), and the bank worker also takes his share. But his comes from the loan itself. You see, there are set interests rates on loans, of course. These are annoying, but legal. The loan agent takes an extra percentage from your loan as his personal payment for providing you with the loan. This amount is divided up among the individuals involved in the process, like tip sharing at a restaurant. In Xiao Ming’s case, the bank worker took out 2 percent.

This happens all the time, in many banks around China. And is completely illegal.

You can trust us. We don’t know how to smile. Credit: China South Morning Post

A popular Chinese television show recently shed light on this issue. That’s happening a lot lately with T.V. shows. Love that directors are pushing the envelope more and more! The specific show I’m referencing is called “以人民的名义” – In the Name of the People.This is seriously one of the most popular shows in China right now, and it’s all about the government crackdown on graft. President Xi’s mission of weeding out the corrupt and upholding the “Chinese Dream” has become hot entertainment fodder. I’m sure this is just the beginning of a series of shows where greedy officials get taken down by Party-loving (that’s a capital P) detectives and watchdog citizens. Despite the heavy hand of the Communist Party all over the show, it is still pretty engaging. Relevant to this blog post is the episode where a bank manager gets busted for the exact process I just described, and she claims that it is such a widely practiced procedure that she had no idea it was even considered corruption.

How does that happen? In the case of these new Chinese shows, art is imitating life. At least the gritty, corrupt elements of it. It’s basically a mandate from the government.So then my question is how in the hell do people get so immersed in this septic mess of criminal behavior without even knowing it’s illegal?

This isn’t a new phenomenon. Back in 1978 when China began “opening up” economically, they coined a term for this sort of “off the books” income stream that emerged: Gray Income.

Teaching, tourism, the funeral, and medical industries are all areas that generate substantial “grey income.” This is not an exaggeration. Xiao Ming’s cousins just gave birth, and a few months ago while I drove with them to a hospital they got talking about how they have to give the anesthesiologist and the doctor delivering their babies hongbao to ensure they do a good job. I couldn’t believe what I heard. Questioning them, I found out that, it’s true, they felt they had to give the doctors and nurses red envelopes packed with money in order for them to DO THEIR JOBS. When I lost my cool over this news, everyone in the car just looked at me like I was a naïve child.

One of the cousins tried to give a red envelope to her doctor for a surgery, and when the surgeon turned it down it was a big deal. Turns out, the doctor just needed a favor from this cousin’s husband (who is a police officer) a short time later. Waiving the red envelope fee was her way of ensuring the favor would get done.

I used to live in an apartment where a public school teacher was a neighbor. Every weekend her place was packed with students. All day long I’d hear kids going up and down the hall to one of her weekend “classes.” Moonlighting like this is illegal, but that didn’t bother this teacher. And it doesn’t bother so many others that do the same exact illegal thing.

Some people caught in the cycle, people like those interviewed in this NPR article claim they can’t change the system, and to survive they need to play the game. This “fact of daily life in China” is alarming not because it is happening, but because EVERYONE believes it’s wrong on an ethical and moral level, but believe they can do nothing about it. So nothing changes.

There’s no doubt that people benefit from expedient service using Zhong Jies and Huang Nius. Heck, it’s downright entrepreneurial of them to use their time this way. But they’re near the bottom of the system that goes up and up. And that system is corrupt.

The people at the very bottom are the ones who need those loans, need those workers to do their damn jobs honorably.

The people at the bottom are people like me and my wife. Like you, probably.

Unless you’re a guilty bank worker in China, of course.

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The other night was my school’s end of the year dinner. It was at this new Japanese style spa/restaurant/hotel/resort/compound thing. Yeah, I’m not sure how to refer to it, obviously. There was a buffet, our school’s teacher-band played, and people gave speeches to those who are leaving at the end of this year. I gave a speech for a friend that I’ll miss (but will visit in Korea), and tried not to make a fool of myself at the mic. Oh, and we all had to wear sandals the whole time.

The next morning Xiao Ming and I had one of our talks about the night.

Not an I’m-in-the-dog-house talk. A culture-differences-pop-up-everywhere talk. I love the second type of talks, and mostly actively avoid the former.

For four years Xiao Ming and I have been attending events with my colleagues – birthdays, dinners, bar nights, anniversaries, memorials, concerts, and graduations. After nearly every single one she and I sort of debrief the event.

I’m constantly amazed at how objective, attentive, and curious she is about the world around her, so much so that I actually record some of our conversations because I don’t trust myself to remember what she says faithfully. And I do want to remember. Her point-of-view as a highly educated Chinese woman with extended experience abroad and a deep, objective love of her culture and country makes her a fantastic conversationalist on most topics related to China.

“Your co-workers are so free and expressive,” she said to me. Her opinion piqued my interests and I followed up, asking her what she meant.

What follows are parts of our conversation. All of the requisite PC statements are in place here – we’re not sociologists, harbor no agenda that would benefit anyone by championing one culture at the expense of another, know that generalizations are not entirely accurate all the time, and welcome all constructive dialogue that might spring up around any of these topics.

Thoughts on Expression

After crying through several of the farewell speeches, Xiao Ming told me that in China something as heartfelt as personal, touching, sentimental goodbyes like that would never happen. You’d get printed out speeches where people read completely from paper with little emotional register in their voice. You’d get words like “you’re great,” “good job,” and “good luck” with no humorous anecdotes, no choking up, no passion.

Inhibitions often control the masses everywhere, but maybe more so here. I myself am not much of a dancer without some liquid courage, but Xiao Ming says that so many more Chinese people are lead-footed because of culture differences. Dancing, singing, playing in bands, these are not Chinese habits. Our staff band, she claims, is something that wouldn’t exist in a Chinese company due to the workers not being “professionals.” My colleagues are good, but they’re definitely not moonlighting for Bon Jovi on the weekends. That doesn’t stop them from putting on great shows at many of our school events and getting teachers out on the dancefloor. Save for the nearly soundproof rooms at KTVs, Spring Festival events, and contest television shows, Chinese workers don’t perform much on a regular basis.

Sentimental statements of gratitude and love are simply not a part of the conversation for families and close friends. Any culture book about China will tell you this, and it is mostly true. Xiao Ming has no memory of her folks telling her that they love her, nor would she feel comfortable telling them that she loves them. They don’t even thank each other or say goodbye on the phone before hanging up! By comparison, every time my mom WeChats us she makes sure to tell Xiao Ming and me that she loves us.

Thoughts on Age and Decision-Making

I work with some pretty great people of all ages, and so many of them are full of a zest for life that quite frankly puts me, at only 30, to shame. Some of my co-workers are in their fifties and they dance, laugh, sing, and party like they’re still in college. Women of the same age in China dance a bit, too, but only in the city squares and only when they’re lead by people doing choreographed movements. There’s no way in hell they’d be in bars or dancing at parties.

“Old Yellow Cows,” Xiao Ming calls these types of women. Apparently a term used to describe some of the generation that’s in their 50s and 60s now. “When they don’t have anything to do they just stand there like they’re mooing, they have no entertainment. How many times has my mom said she wants to travel, but then at the last minute she changes her mind? She’ll watch the kids, or do something else. If she does go she comes back complaining about spending money,” Xiao Ming says without pulling her punches.

Younger people, mostly women since Xiao Ming likes to ease drop on them, constantly worry about not being married, losing weight, or shopping. Sit in Starbucks a bit and you can overhear conversations from those around 30 and under and they almost always revolve around obsessively wanting to find a significant other, going on blind dates, and-or their latest romantic fiasco. If they aren’t fretting about who their Mr/Mrs. Right is then they’re posting to WeChat about losing weight while also taking Food Porn shots of their daily meals. Or they’re just flaunting their newest bargain buy with selfies of perplexing angles.

Younger Westerners just don’t seem as bogged down by the same concerns, she theorizes.

I’ve talked to Xiao Ming about how financial burdens can seriously hinder choices in America, and how bills can all but annihilate your day-to-day happiness, but she still feels that Americans tend to have more flexibility than her countrymen and women.

“There’s so many times when I interact with your co-workers and I have these thoughts,” she tells me. “Like the other day when I asked Sherry when she and Ryan were leaving and she said they were all packed up and ready to start their new life next week in Singapore. You know, it’s their life, and I don’t totally want to do that, but I do admire that. They have the choice and chance to change their life. Their life is light, no burden. They can stay somewhere for a few years and then pack up and leave. Even Pat and Cassady. They have two kids and they are free, too. Nothing in their life makes you feel like they have a big stone on their heart. But Chinese people are different. They will always think about how to be stable. Find a house, a job. Settle down and focus on their kid.”

“Even your older co-workers are so free. You can tell they live for themselves. They’re confident. Happy. I can’t even do that. I can’t stop thinking about how other people will judge me. So many Chinese people are this way. Very few Chinese people live for themselves. Even the most selfish actually do things in their life for other peoples’ eyes and judgement. There’s always a thing you have to get done or follow. Like on WeChat you can see that they post about finding a husband, losing weight, or what they eat so others can see.”

“Also like your co-workers in the band. They played instruments and sang. None of them are professional, right? I don’t see Chinese people do this if they’re not professional. They don’t play like that just to relax. Unless it’s KTV, they won’t, and that isn’t real because the machine helps your singing. They can’t be in a group and be themselves.”

Thoughts on Education

“I think this is connected to the way the kids are educated. Even with something like music it’s not about enjoyment. Chinese teachers won’t just let students play songs to get interested. They will force them to do the Doe, ray, me, fa, so, la, tee again and again for a month. There’s no creativity or passion. We can be great students, but we can’t apply the equation or function in the real world. Everything is too practical. Teachers think they need to train the kids to answer the questions as fast as possible. You know that even for GaoKao preparation the teachers will show the students how to answer the questions without even reading the whole sentence. It’s all test-taking skills, not about the knowledge itself.”

When I ask her what she thinks of this Xiao Ming says without hesitating, “I think this way of education kills the intelligence and innovation of students.”

“I thought it was only in schools, but since I teach in college now I see that it’s even there, too. Some majors are better than others, but still most are the same. I attend meetings and the heads of these departments just focus on what score will get you what job. Everything is about the score. They list and rank people for everything!”

“They had this so-called good student who gave a speech about how he was ashamed that he couldn’t go to Tsinghua (one of the best in China) like his brother. In the speech he talked about how important it was to get the scores, how hard he had to work, and he sounded very proud of himself. But I thought it was all bullshit. It wasn’t about the knowledge at all. He made it sound like everything is about fighting and the final result, not the process. No one talks about what you learn, what you can contribute to society, how the information makes you useful. They are still hooked on their scores, they’re still in GaoKao mentality. Maybe this explains a lot. About how Chinese people can’t innovate and why they copy so much. It comes from the education. They’re made into cows by the culture and what their parents tell them.”

“I can see this boy’s future. He will graduate and try to find a good job, a good wife, and won’t be able to change anything or be truly productive. The only kids that will be different will be the ones who aren’t great in this school system. Sometimes they’re naughty and they seem very strange to people, but they will become successful and useful people. I feel that even though you have people like this in America, some who just follow and others who stand out, in China most are followers. In America even if they’re not great, at least they have their own thoughts and personality.”

“No one can just express themselves here. It’s like in the speeches. Most of your coworkers spoke without reading from paper the whole time, but even our president can’t do that. He reads directly from his paper. And he never smiles!”

“We never had a charismatic leader, at least beyond that first generation of New China. Today they just don’t have that leader quality about them anymore. They can’t even give a speech well. And when I attended your school’s graduations these last couple years I feel that some of your students are different. It’s clear they have picked up a part of the American culture when they express themselves. A lot of the kids who studied in your school are very good. They have charisma because of the way they were educated. I think that is a great spirit.”

Thoughts on Parenting

“You can’t imagine how often I think of this when I interact with your co-workers. That’s why I always want to go. I don’t always talk or something, but I always watch and observe. I’m trying to understand them, understand your culture. It’s just so deeply different.”

“And I think all this is the same thing, the same phenomena come from the same root. It’s the philosophy of life, the way we think. Your people are all about being yourself. But the thing that Chinese parents often say to their kids is ‘kan bieren jia haizi,’ which means ‘look at other people’s children.’ They want you to be the same. You’re always told to follow examples.”

“Like the woman who works in the little store in our complex the other day. She was complaining about how worried she was about her son because he is getting 80s in class. She’s so worried about his future, and he’s so young, in fourth grade. And 80s aren’t bad! She said she’s so worried that he will become a useless person. It’s her main concern in life right now. So I told her that it’s okay, to calm down. It will be fine. But this is how obsessed Chinese parents are.”

“For Chinese parents everything is about their kid,” she continues. “If the kid fails in study the parents will feel like failures. They’ll feel hopeless. You can listen to the middle-age men and women talking about their children. They talk about needing to buy them a house, get them a car. They’re obsessed. If it’s a married couple they talk about this, but if it’s a younger person they talk about clothes, shopping, places they’ve been. It’s just, I feel that so many people now have no spirit. I don’t know why. Is it because we were farmers for so long? Is it just a farmer’s mentality?”

There’s no way to answer her last question, or at least I am hopelessly without an answer, so she takes a step back and considers again the role of the parent.

“The kid’s future is his. That’s the way it should be. Er sun zi you er sun fu, ‘your son and grandsons will have their own luck’ is a Chinese phrase that people should remember, but parents try so hard to control things.”

Closing Thoughts

It’s at about this point in the conversation that we pause and just sort of look at the people in the coffee shop. Who are we? Two over-caffeinated yuppies with too much education bashing everything around us like we have the answers? Maybe. But it beats playing video games and watching bad television.

P.S.

Look what a senior made me!!! She surprised me with it on her last day. Very touching!

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Somewhere on the lower right side, in that dark space, are two spots that should not be there. Those are those the kidney stones of death.

“I roll out of bed and crash to the floor in severe pain at 11 p.m. I cannot stand. Hobbling to the bathroom, I open the faucet and splash cold water on my face. A deep, sharp pain erupts in my side and my back breaks out in a sheen of sweat. I hover over the toilet, not sure what is about to happen. A ripple of pain drops me to my knees just as I hurl the contents of my stomach into the basin. Again and again.

Tears mix with sweat and six words become a mantra in my mind: I’m going to die in China.”

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Excerpt: The Lonely Planet Mandarin Phrasebook & Dictionary sticks out of my back pocket. Pin Yin has been decoded during a few language classes, and some survival vocab arms me with the essentials. Time to put it all to use.

All my aspirations of being a language prodigy disappear the same time I ask a mall worker where the bathroom is and get a confused shake of the head in return. Bathroom, or as they usually say in China cesuo, toilet, is a very useful word to know. And I have to find one, fast.

Finally, when all hope seems gone, I cave and go with a term I’ve recently heard. “W.C.?” I ask in English. He points me in the right direction.

Round two. I’m in a restaurant that has a menu with pictures. Point and say, “Wo yao zhe ge,” and things are looking good. Chinese isn’t so hard. I got this! But I don’t want the hot water that everyone else in China drinks. I want cold water. “Bing shui,” I order.

Blank stare in return. Okay, my tones are wrong. Once more with different inflections. The waitress is looking at me like I’m requesting that the chef sprinkle salt on his leg before he cuts it off and serves it. Again, I give in and resort to gestures. I make fists and hold them up while shaking like I’ve somehow found myself magically outside in the middle of winter without a jacket. “Ah! Bing shui!” she exclaims, nodding as if that’s not what I’ve been saying for two minutes straight.

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Most kids have chores around the house. I grew up needing to clean my room, empty all the trash bins, and wash the dishes every other day. My brother took care of his room, vacuumed, and did the dishes on the days I didn’t. As I got older, cutting the front, side, and back yard got added to my routine. Pretty standard stuff, and I’m sure many other kids grew up doing work like this.

But my step-dad is also a carpenter, and we managed and maintained the duplexes we rented out to tenants ourselves. So instead of hiring someone to repaint the apartments, spackle cracks in the drywall, pull up and relay carpeting, retile bathrooms, fix water heaters, stop leaking pipes, pour and set new cement steps, build a back porch, and re-shingle the roof, we did it. My brother often helped, and so did my best friend. The more hands involved, the quicker we’d finish and go ride our bikes and eat ice cream at the Twisty Treat a block away. The running joke was that my step-dad had no ability to estimate time. If he said something would take an hour, that usually meant at least three. A few hours? My afternoon was shot. Understanding this was important and helped focus my attention. I had incentive to pay attention and be efficient so the job could be completed and my weekend wasn’t lost.

Now, years later, with the gift of hindsight, I can see the value in all that time I spent working. Don’t tell my step-dad I said that! It’s shaped me into a confident, competent man who isn’t afraid to work hard and try to fix something on my own before resorting to the Yellow Pages (Or whichever APP has currently replaced the unwieldy tome).

Who would have thought that moving to China would make me feel as helpless as an infant trying to use a Milwaukee 2705-22 M18 cordless drill?

Moving to a new country so vastly different than America kicked me in the gut those first few weeks. Even now, after more than five years, it likes to take cheap shots that remind me I’m still little more than a toddler here.

It’s so frustrating when you don’t know where to buy the right tools for a household upkeep job. Go to the New Mart where everything is up for haggling and the quality isn’t guaranteed? Everyone but you using WeChat Pay or ZhiFu Bao to pay for everything? The shower drain tube old and clogged? What store is that in? The place where you pay utility bills look like a madhouse and you’re not sure where to stand? Not sure how to use DiDi Che (Uber in China)? Trying to send money home at the bank, but the answers to your questions aren’t making sense? Cell phone getting weird messages and you need to check it out at the China Mobile location? Not even Lonely Planet can help with all these issues.

All of these tasks and more pop up when you’re an expat, and if you’re used to troubleshooting life on your own, having to rely on others to do it abroad can be a stressful, humbling experience. Picking up the language helps in some of the cases, but not all. In some situations it’s just about knowing how things are done or where to find what you’re looking for. This just takes time and effort.

Some people don’t mind this. They view it as a release from responsibility, a vacation in some ways. Like going to a hotel where you don’t have to worry about cleaning or making your bed. So many expat communities develop around companies with packages and housing support – even drivers – that take care of these parts of life. I heard about a woman here, a trailing spouse for one of the Intel guys, who relied so much on her driver that she couldn’t even manage walking on her own down the same few streets she was chauffeured through every day without getting lost. Paying for an Ayi – a woman to do house work and cook – is really cheap, and so there are those who don’t even do laundry or sweep their own floors anymore. Some people even refuse to shop anywhere that’s not an import store, spending tons of cash on products that can be found three times cheaper at local joints. Like tigers in big, foreign cages, they pace back and forth, wearing out the same old paths.

Despite the above paragraph, I’ve got no judgement here. To each their own and all that. That life, the one free of those daily hassles that are just unavoidable “back home,” is a peaceful one. Transplanting yourself and maybe even your family to a place with an ocean between what you knew and what is new is not easy, and anything that makes it a softer landing is helpful.

That being said, after more than two or three years somewhere the excuses sort of begin to run out. Decide to stay for an extended period and life has a way of creeping up on you in padded Ninja slippers and chopping you right in a pressure point that drops you back to reality. You’ve got to start reaching back into that arsenal of life experience to find that handyman you know you can be, that self-reliant, resourceful degree-holder that blazes his own trail, or at least can read the signs pointing him down the right trail needed to get things done.

Where am I?

Sometimes I wander down the right trail feeling self-sufficient and other times I’m left looking for the APP that will make life easier.

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I’m a visitor here. That cannot be disputed. The fact that I have a Chinese wife, have lived here more than half a decade, and put some time into learning about the culture and language means nothing when certain topics come up.

People can go from hearty to homicidal in about 1.5 seconds when politics comes out to play.

That doesn’t surprise me.

Avoiding political discussions that have a chance of touching sore spots is like crossing a mine field blind-folded with your shirt on fire. Hell, not just here, either. Facebook looks just as much like a dogmatic stream-of-conscious conveyor belt as any of the big names with talking heads out there. A part of me thinks that soon videos of cats will be tapped to perpetuate nefarious hidden agendas of “Deep State” shadow men.

It seems so much of our identity these days gets wrapped up in defining who someone else is instead of deciding who we are. So often that definition begins and ends with a border. I guess that makes some sort of sense. Civilization did spring up from family groups that then morphed into villages, city-states, and then nations. They knew who others were because they didn’t recognize something about them – language, clothes, religion, color.

Instead of riding this thought into the metaphorical, I want to keep it concrete.

You don’t have to be an angry nationalist to be a patriot. There. I said it.

Seems legit. Credit: Bilerico Project

Right now America – as seen from my Facebook feed and news source front pages – is dealing with an identity crisis itself. All kinds of redefining going on over there. Pretty ugly. China isn’t one to be showed up, though. The country has put its 1.3 billion feet down with regards to South Korea and that THAAD missile crap. Beijing isn’t even letting Chinese citizens travel there! Tour agencies are being strong-armed into cancelling their packages to the county, and Korean-owned businesses are being boycotted. Just like at the height of the South China Sea Island dispute with the Japanese, the Chinese people are ready and willing to point their collective wrath any direction the Party says. This is hardly a Chinese issue nor is it an American arrogance problem. Nationalistic bullshit like this crops up everywhere.

But since I’m an American living in China, I’ll focus on what I have experience with.

Discussions about Japanese, Russians, Koreans, and even Americans with my father-in-law can escalate into ideological talks that resemble cross-examinations. These same chats with my mother-in-law have a tendency to revolve around the newest product that she finds useful and of a good quality. She sifts through what the world has to offer based on her needs regardless of the origin of what she’s buying. If it’s good quality, cheap, and helps her help her family, she’s game.

I’ve got family and friends Stateside that served in the military. I also know people who take that experience and twist it so they somehow come out as a superior human being, much more American than others who have not worn Dress Blues. Suddenly they are a Citizen and everyone else is a weak, entitled Civilian. Again, not just an American phenomenon.

Xiao Ming has friends and family that fit the same mold. One of her closest friends is a soldier currently, and when they all met last for dinner the topic of patriotism got brought up. Turns out that serving in the military doesn’t just improve your combat skills, give you knew clothes and a job, no, it also just makes you a BETTER HUMAN BEING. Xiao Ming’s friend spent an inordinate amount of time talking at the table about how not only are he and his comrades more patriotic than other Chinese people, they are in fact more worthy of being Chinese citizens, and should be viewed as saviors. To be a soldier is the Best Thing You Can Ever Do, Ever. For Real. I’m paraphrasing his message.

I’m not a soldier, I haven’t served. But that mentality – the one that goes: I am better than you, so be in awe – feels wrong. Doesn’t matter if it’s directed at your own countrymen or those outside your borders. There are men and women who deserve our gratitude and respect, no doubt, but that doesn’t make them better humans or even more worthy of being a citizen of the country.

Once the soldier proves his value to the country, he turns his righteousness toward other places. Mainly, every country not China/America. Regardless of where you’re from, listening to someone rail on and on about another person (or nation of people) can churn your stomach. At some point the urge to raise your hand for permission to speak cuts in and you want to ask if the lecturer is aware that We’re all human. Our commonalities outweigh our differences.

Just the other day on WeChat another childhood friend of Xiao Ming’s who lives in Germany posted a message decrying the boycotting of Korean products by Chinese people. His opinion was that the specific targeting of other countries by Beijing was just a way to control people by giving them a monster at which to aim their anger. Xiao Ming agreed, liking the post. Instantly, another old friend responded by saying they were both wrong and that it is right for the Chinese to be against the Koreans. After all, he said, what would you do if the convenient store in the neighboring complex had better, cheaper products than your own, but then had a guard dog that barks at you every time you go there to shop (but doesn’t stop you). This was the example he gave to drive his point home.

Am I the only one that sees this as a ridiculously insufficient analogy?

Eventually Xiao Ming ended the debate by going above it. Nationalism may be a natural inclination for civilization, she told her friends. Building a strong country probably requires a bit of it, and it’s been around for a long time. But accepting the idea that we’re all people working toward similar goals, though, would better benefit the whole of humanity more instead of just a few of the wealthiest nations. Seeing past the insignia on a passport to the person carrying it is an ideal we can still strive toward.

Idealistic? Certainly. Doesn’t make it wrong.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by headlines and rhetoric in bold print, but there are ways to counter the barrage of one-liner philosophies that paint the world in primary colors.

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts,” Mark Twain once wrote. “Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

Don’t get me wrong. More and more I believe that mandatory military service might actually be a good thing for all young people, but all that What makes the grass grow? Blood, blood, blood! propaganda needs to be tempered by affordable opportunities for education and travel experiences afterward.

Loving your country is not the same as hating other countries.

Ironically, today Xiao Ming and I ate at a Korean restaurant and spent time in a Korean café. This was not a statement. Other places were just not as convenient. We were happy, however, to see that the media hadn’t absolutely brain-washed everyone. Both places were packed.